Recent article comments

Every day I try to learn something new. Some days it happens quicker than other days. Take Wednesday, for instance. Right after sunup, I learned that foxes come in all shades of red. The fox flitting through my west yard carrying a mountain quail in its mouth looked as if he’d been bleached out by too much time in the July sun.

The Fourth of July is rapidly approaching. Buy fireworks stock. Yes, the Great Recession, or as I like to call it the Fair to Middlin’ Recession, has slapped us around like a bear going after a coon dog.

When I was a kid, you could get a pack of Wrigley’s gum for a dime, a PayDay candy bar for 25 cents, gasoline for 50 cents a gallon and a Ford Fairlane for a dollar. Just kidding. Having seen me tearing up the neighborhood on a tricycle, no one would sell me a Fairlane.

Today, people complain about a lack of role models. Growing up on the banks of Crooked Creek in the 1960s, I had no such problem. Role models were everywhere. Many of them watched closely out their windows to make sure me and the other kids did not beat each other with sticks.

As a kid, I was curious about swearing. I never heard much of it, so I’d go around the neighborhood visiting old sheepherders, men working on cars and kids who were bad seeds hoping to enhance my vocabulary.

Today most people live in big houses with small yards. Growing up, I lived in a small house with a 400-acre yard. Well, at least it seemed that big when we pulled out the electric lawn mower, opened a window in the utility room, plugged in the quarter mile of linked extension cords and went to work mowing.

Perhaps you do too. Goodness knows, dry side of Oregon places like Cove and Imnaha, Troy and Flora, are, if not at the end of the road, far enough off the beaten track to miss most of the hubbub of life.

Every few weeks, between blowing semi truck and trailer rigs over on Interstate 84 and making the blacksmith’s anvils we use for wind chimes here ring with a volume of an Oregon Duck football crowd, the wind dies down long enough to let us know it is spring.